The first home game of the new year and the second in two months at home to Hawarden for some strange fixture reason saw Shotton Steel keep up their 100% record for 2010 and complete the double against an impressive Hawarden Rangers.
The pitch had a light dusting of snow but that didn’t deter the Shotton Boys and they showed a gritty, determined performance for the second week in a row. Hawarden started the better and repeated runs at the Shotton defence were desperately charged down by the solid Drew Jones and ever improving Sam O’Donnell. Owen Manley had numerous catches and blocks to make in the Shotton goal but he coped with everything that came his way.
Shotton started to come into the game after 10 minutes and runs down the wings from Lewis Parry and Martyn Smith-Aldous provided good balls in the area for Andrew Mathiesan and Iwan Rogers and incredible battling performances from Nathan Mendoza and Jake Aitken allowed Shotton to score. The ball was played high into the box by Brad Dodd and an acrobatic over head kick by Iwan allowed Nathan to head the ball goalwards only for the defence to scramble it clear but into the path of Josh Dodd who poked the ball into the net from close range. Shotton held on to the lead to go in 1-0 up at half time.
The second half was a battle from both sides and both teams had numerous goal mouth scrambles and desperate defending prevented Shotton from going further infront and prevented Hawarden from levelling but Shotton showed their Steel by holding on for a third successive win. The never stop running Jake Aitken was awarded man of the match and the Shotton Steel wagon keeps on rolling.